Future Students

Linguistics

The methods and concepts of linguistics are not biased toward any particular language or languages; linguists are concerned both with what all languages have in common and with how individual languages can differ from one another.

Linguists study how languages are structured, how they are learned and used and how languages change through time. The staff and students of the Linguistics program are involved in both theoretical research and in projects of a more practical or field-oriented nature.

They have worked in the Pacific Islands and in Aboriginal Australia, producing grammatical descriptions, dictionaries and work concerned with linguistic theory, computer models of language structure, language learning, and historical, socio-cultural, and education-oriented studies.

Prospective students often ask whether they have to know many languages, or have to be ‘good at languages’ to do well in Linguistics. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know several languages, but it isn’t necessary either. Many excellent linguists speak only one language. What is most important is to have a curiosity about languages, because that is where Linguistics really starts.

Linguistics may be studied as a major within a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies), Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences or Bachelor of Science degree. This includes combined courses which include these degrees. You may be able to study individual Linguistics units within other degrees.

The aim of our teaching program is to give you the broadest possible grounding in contemporary linguistics as part of a general education in the arts or sciences. If you choose to major in linguistics, we also aim to enable you to specialise in those areas of interest both to you and the staff of the Department.

Level 1
You may choose to study Level 1 Linguistics units for one semester or for the whole year. There are three Level 1 units to choose from. To complete Level 2 or 3 units in Linguistics, you must complete two Level 1 units (either over a full year or both in one semester).

The Level 1 first semester unit introduces you to concepts viewed as fundamental in understanding the form and function of language.

In the level 1 second semester units you learn how language evolved in the species Homo sapiens, how linguistic abilities develop in the normal human child, and how language is represented in the human brain. You will also be introduced to some basic concepts of the formal modeling of linguistic knowledge.

You can also explore language in its socio-cultural setting: socially-conditioned variation in language, the relation between language and culture, thought, and gender, and the fundamentals of language change and language relatedness.

Level 2 and 3
The Level 2 units focus on two broad areas: language structure and historical, socio-cultural and applied topics. These units offer you the opportunity to study language as sound, the structure of complex linguistic expressions, to expand upon the notions introduced at Level 1 and to discover the important applications of linguistics.

You can also explore topics of first and second language learning, translation, dictionary-making, electronic processing of language, language pathology, and forensic linguistics.

The Linguistics program also offers a variety of Level 3 units including linguistic field methods, semantics, topics in grammatical theory, Australian Aboriginal linguistics, and Semitic languages and linguistics.

Career opportunities

Many students with undergraduate degrees in Linguistics enter careers in language teaching (particularly foreign languages and English as a Second Language), journalism and broadcasting, translation and interpreting, Aboriginal education and advisory work, or the computer software industry. With additional postgraduate study in Linguistics, more specialised job opportunities become available including University academic positions in Linguistics; industry jobs in the fields of speech technology, natural language understanding, and artificial intelligence; positions in the medical professions related to speech and hearing disorders; law consultancies relating to the interpretation of legal language; and staff positions for major dictionaries.